TOKYO, May 28, 2014 (AFP) - Japanese police have obtained an arrest warrant for a woman for allegedly using the passport of a nurse whose body was posted across Japan in a box marked "doll", an official said Wednesday.
The suspect, a 29-year-old Japanese-Brazilian, was detained in China on Tuesday over suspicions she was travelling on the dead woman's documents.
The woman, who has not yet been named, turned herself in to the Japanese consulate in Shanghai and was detained by local police for the suspected immigration offence, local reports said.
The hunt was raised after the discovery of the mutilated body of nurse Rika Okada, also 29, in a storage lock-up in Tokyo, Jiji Press and other local media reported.
Despite having around a dozen stab wounds, Okada's body had no defensive injuries - suggesting she was stabbed after death or while she was unconscious.
Investigators also found a two-metre (6ft 6in) box in which the corpse had been transported from Osaka, 400 kilometres (230 miles) to the southwest.
The delivery service which ferried the package - marked with the Japanese word for "doll" - had been paid in Okada's own name, earlier media reports said. The bill for the lock-up's short-term rental had been settled using her credit card.
Local reports have said the Japanese-Brazilian, who had been at elementary school with Okada, had flown out of Tokyo earlier this month using the dead woman's passport.
The schoolmate, who was not named, is believed to have lived just a few hundred yards from the lock-up with a Chinese woman of about the same age.
Just before she went missing, Okada wrote on her Facebook page that she was going to meet an old friend whom she had not seen for a decade.
Police in Osaka "have obtained an arrest warrant (for this woman) on suspicion of violating Japan's immigration law", a police official told AFP.
They are seeking her extradition and are in negotiations with the Chinese authorities, reports said.
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